This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012 Last Update: 7:18 AM PT :: LOS ANGELES (CN) - Parents and 11 former students of Miramonte Elementary School claim in Superior Court that Los Angeles Unified School District ignored the "rampant molestation" of Mark Berndt, a 61-year-old teacher who was fired in January.

Berndt is not a party to the complaint, but the former teacher has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts on 23 children age 7 to 10. He is being held on $23 million bail.

Among other things, Berndt is accused of spoonfeeding his semen to blindfolded children, or putting it on crackers or cookies for them to eat. He also placed cockroaches and other bugs on the children, and videotaped and photographed the acts, according to the complaint.

"Berndt is a true serial sexual pervert and child molester," the complaint states.

The parents accuse LAUSD of negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, violation of the Bane Act*, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Members of the LAUSD Board of Education and Superintendent John Deasy are among the named defendants.

A similar complaint was filed at the same court on May 4.

According to the lawsuits, Berndt was hired even though he had a criminal record for child abuse and had been accused of sexual abuse in previous teaching jobs.

The parents say that in the early 1990s Miramonte students complained that Berndt had sexually abused them, but "the charges were blatantly ignored and the children were told in essence: 'Stop making up stories.'"

LAUSD's inaction allowed Berndt to sexually abuse Miramonte students for "over two decades unfettered," according to the new complaint.

"Absent any action by LAUSD, or the Miramonte administration, to supervise or restrain Berndt he continued with his depraved and rampant abuse of his very young students, scaring them for life and robbing them of their trust, peace of mind, innocence, and childhood as only a true sexual deviant can," the complaint states. "The nature, scope, duration, and depravity of his abuse was on a truly massive and unprecedented scale in American history. His victims likely number in the hundreds."

During Berndt's tenure, the parents say, two other teachers, Martin Springer and Richard Guevara, were also abusing students. Guevara is serving jail time, according to the complaint, and Springer was arrested in February.

"In essence, at one period in time no less than three serial child molesters were actively abusing hundreds of Miramonte students at the same time for years," the complaint states.

Berndt allegedly kept a jar of Vaseline on his desk which he used to masturbate in class, and sometimes wore a "freakish" Mickey Mouse costume with women's tights, the parents say. They claim the school's principal Martin Sandoval walked into the classroom as Berndt was videotaping students but let him off with a verbal warning.

The parents claim LAUSD ignored those red flags and other instances of "freakish behavior."

"LAUSD ignored multiple prior student complaints about Berndt and a district attorney investigation. LAUSD ignored parent complaints and failed to detect the massive number of lewd acts committed by at least three active child predators on one small campus for years," the complaint states.

It adds: "Moreover, when hundreds of disgusting and heart-wrenching photographs of children being abused by Berndt surfaced in the media, LAUSD then tried to cover it up, belittled the accusers, buried the story and obstructed the criminal investigation."

The parents say LAUSD allowed Berndt to stay on campus after the allegations surfaced, then tried to blame the parents for not detecting the abuse.

"LAUSD is charged with the ultimate responsibility to keep the children entrusted to them safe and secure, and yet failed miserably to uphold that responsibility," the complaint states.

The plaintiffs seek punitive damages.

They are represented by Brian Claypool of Pasadena.

* per the CA Attorney General: "The Bane Act," Civil Code section 52.1 --provides protection from interference by threats, intimidation, or coercion or for attempts to interfere with someone's state or federal statutory or constitutional rights (these include association, assembly, due process, education, employment, equal protection, expression, formation and enforcement of contracts, holding of public office, housing, privacy, speech, travel, use of public facilities, voting, worship, and protection from bodily restraint or harm, from personal insult, from defamation, and from injury to personal relations)-- proof of "hate motivation" required, according to a 1994 Court of Appeal decision in Boccato v. City of Hermosa Beach

Attorneys for Scot Graham, 56, released a statement late Tuesday, blasting district officials for a press conference held last Wednesday in which they disclosed that the school board had approved paying him $200,000 cash and lifetime health benefits worth $250,000 to $300,000 to settle a sexual-harassment claim.

"We have no enforceable settlement agreement," said Maurice Pessah, one of Graham's attorneys.

A statement from Graham's lead attorney, Arnold Peter, also said that

Graham has been "banned" from LAUSD headquarters, placed on administrative leave from his $150,000-a-year job as director of leasing and asset management, and told he will be terminated on Thursday.

Under the proposed settlement, Graham had agreed to resign May 31. However, his attorneys said he never submitted his resignation.

A spokesman for the district said that after Graham tentatively OK'd the agreement, he was told not to report to work until his resignation took effect on May 31.

Linda Savitt, the labor attorney hired to represent the district in the Graham case, issued a statement Wednesday saying LAUSD had announced the settlement "in the interest of transparency." She also said the deal remains in effect.

"Last Tuesday evening, the attorneys for Scot Graham accepted the terms of the settlement agreement that were approved by the Board of Education," she said. "The district relied on Mr. Graham's acceptance and stands by the terms reached."

The sexual-harassment allegations stem from an encounter between Cortines and Graham, two longtime friends, during a weekend spent in July 2010 at a home Cortines owned in Kern County. In a statement last week, Cortines characterized the incident as "consensual spontaneous adult behavior."

Graham, however, complained about Cortines to a supervisor in August 2010 and said he was seeking counseling from a therapist, according to the district's version of events.

The district also said that Graham insisted he didn't want any action taken, even when the district's top attorney, general counsel David Holmquist, was alerted to the situation.

"All district sexual harassment investigation practices were adhered to in this matter," Savitt said in statement last week.

Graham's attorneys contend that district officials violated district policy and state law in refusing to protect the 12-year LAUSD employee.

"Mr. Graham brought his complaints to executives at the highest levels of the LAUSD, none of whom ever initiated an investigation as they were required to do," Graham's attorneys said.

Graham's attorneys notified the district in March - nearly a year after Cortines retired - that he intended to file a sexual-harassment claim against the superintendent.

Hoping to avoid potentially expensive litigation, the school board met three times in executive session, including the May 22 session when members voted 4-3 to OK the deal.

Graham's attorneys said they were presented with "a poorly drafted and incomplete short-form agreement" shortly after the board vote, and were given two hours to decide whether to accept it. Graham gave a verbal OK but never signed the deal.

However, the settlement was presented as a done deal during a May 23 briefing with reporters. The meeting was held at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, about a block from LAUSD headquarters, a locale that officials said was chosen to avoid disruption to district operations.

"The public disclosure of the terms of an unsigned settlement which the parties had agreed would be confidential and the circulation of a spurious portrayal of Mr. Graham's allegations against the LAUSD and Mr. Cortines, along with constituting bad faith negotiation tactics, was unlawful," Peter said in a statement.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that under the state's open meetings law, the district was not obligated to release information about the board's executive-session vote until after the settlement was signed by both sides.

Posted on 5/29/12 •The state Department of Finance has released the district allocations under Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised plan for weighted student funding that shaves off the peaks, fills in the valleys, and includes other changes that make allotm ents flatter, arguably fairer, and potentially more politically palatable to those who criticized aspects of the formula.

The 77-page spreadsheet of district and charter school allocations doesn’t reveal – and inquiring minds will want to know – how districts compare with one another and with a statewide average once the formula is fully funded in 2018-19. But the raw numbers are there to calculate percentage increases and per-student spending, and Nick Schweizer, the program budget manager for education in the Department of Finance, did provide me with a district average increase, along with some cautions.

That figure is 47 percent, which is to say that between the base year of 2012-13 and full funding seven years later, the Department of Finance is projecting the average district’s growth under the formula, which covers most but not all education spending, will be 47 percent. This assumes that the tax increase proposed for November passes; the weighted student formula will be put off if it doesn’t. So, if your district revenues increase more than 47 percent, because you have large numbers of disadvantaged students, it’s more than likely a “winner” under the formula; if under 47 percent, it’s more than likely a “loser.” (Update: The Public Policy Institute of California on Tuesday released an analysis of the revised formula, with district figures. Go here.)

The impact of the proposed weighted student funding formula on the state's 10 largest districts. To determine a district's increases in per-student funding from 2012-13 to full funding in 2018-19, divide columns 5 and 7 by student enrollment in column 4. Source: State Department of Finance. (Click to enlarge)

The chart at left, which shows the 10 largest districts, illustrates the impact. Santa Ana Unified, with 84 percent poor children and 56 percent English learners, will see district funding rise 71 percent (last column divided by fifth column) by 2018-19, and per-student funding rise from $6,460 to $11,040. Capistrano Unified, with 10 percent English learners and 21 percent low-income students, will see district funding rise 38 percent and per-student funding increase from $6,052 to $8,388.

There are caveats to consider when comparing a district with the 47 percent statewide average:

& As Schweizer points out, this assumes that, absent the formula, nothing will have changed in the allocation of categorical or restricted money and general or revenue limit spending in seven years. That would be unlikely, given that the trend has been to cut or eliminate some categorical programs and increase the revenue limit;

& Some districts might get less than 47 percent and still do better than they would have otherwise, if they are currently getting little categorical money. Each district’s individual circumstances vary somewhat;

& A district’s base in 2012-13 matters. Some districts, like Los Angeles Unified, will see per-student spending increase less than 47 percent. But they will start with a high base in 2012-13 and will end up doing well in 2018-19 (more on why later).

As for the 47 percent spending increase over seven years: Finance released a graph showing per-student funding, but only through 2015-16 (see chart), as far into the future as it makes detailed projections. Schweizer said that for the remaining three years, Finance conservatively projected 5 percent annual revenue increases. It also assumed flat district enrollments for the calculations. The four-year, ¼ percent sales tax increase that is built into the calculations ends in 2015-16, complicating the picture.

Significant changes from January’s formula

Under a weighted student formula, districts will receive a base funding per student plus a supplement based on the number of low-income students and English learners. Brown proposed to fund the supplement, or weighted portion, from a pot of what has been categorical programs. Districts with few disadvantaged students will lose most if not all of that money, amounting to hundreds of dollars per child.

Responding to criticisms of his initial proposal in January, the governor:

& Raised the base and added grade differentials, recognizing that high school districts have been getting higher funding and elementary schools have received subsidies for smaller classes. The base will be $5,466 per student for K-3, $4,934 for 4-6, $5,081 for 7-8, and $5,887 for 9-12. The K-3 funding will have the previous class-size reduction categorical money folded in, though districts will be free to use the dollars however they choose.

& Reduced the weighted amount for disadvantaged students from an extra 37 percent per child to 20 percent;

& Cut the bonus amount to districts with high concentrations of disadvantaged students from a maximum of 37 percent to a maximum of 20 percent for districts with 100 percent disadvantaged students. The concentration factor is phased in for districts with more than 50 percent disadvantaged populations. The administration has not offered the research behind the concentration factor. Putting that aside, allocating it on a districtwide basis overlooks the fact that individual schools in districts with low overall rates of disadvantaged students may have heavy concentrations of poor students and English learners.

An example is Mount Diablo Unified in Contra Costa County, with an overall average of 21 percent English learners and 36 percent low income. Mount Diablo High School has 71 percent low-income children and 43 percent English learners, while Ygnacio Valley Elementary has 79 percent low-income and 62 percent English learners. Their students will gain nothing because of the district’s average.)

& Phased in the program over seven years instead of six years, starting next year with 5 percent weighted student funding/95 percent current system.

& Paid off what districts are owed from recent years’ cuts and denied cost-of-living raises on the revenue limit portion, which is student funding minus categorical programs. This debt is called the deficit factor and now totals 22 percent of the revenue limit amount – a huge IOU.

Conditioning the full implementation of the weighted student funding on repayment of revenue limit dollars removes a major criticism of the plan. But that will not satisfy those districts with relatively few disadvantaged students, which will permanently see their categorical dollars shifted to more needy districts.

An example is Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County, with a total of 5 percent English learners and low-income students. Under the January proposal, the district would actually have lost money under full funding. Under the latest plan, per-pupil spending will rise 23 percent, or about half of the state average, by 2018-19, because of the loss of about $609 per student in categorical funds, a little less than 10 percent of total funding. Associate Superintendent Chris Learned says that he’s sympathetic to the need for weighted student funding, but that districts’ funding should be fully restored to the 2007-08 pre-recession level before phasing in the new system.

& Pulled two big categorical programs totaling nearly $2 billion (Correction: $1.3 billion) out of the weighted student distribution formula. These are the Home to School Transportation program and the Targeted Instructional Improvement Grant (TIIG), which is mainly money districts received to settle desegregation suits.Neither TIIG nor bus money has been equitably or rationally distributed among districts. But districts like Los Angeles Unified (where TIIG amounts to about $500 per student) and San Jose Unified (nearly $1,000 per student) would be crippled without the money. Brown is proposing to let districts keep what they’ve gotten for TIIG and transportation but no more. Over time, the impact of the money would diminish by not receiving yearly cost-of-living adjustments.

Under the revised formula, Los Angeles Unified’s per-student funding would increase 44 percent by 2018-19, slightly less than the state average, while San Bernardino’s funding would increase 58.5 percent (see chart), significantly above average. But because of TIIG, Los Angeles would start with a bigger base and end up in 2018-19 with $10,967 per student, about the same as San Bernardino’s $11,027.

In May 2012, Governor Brown revised his proposal for a new way to allocate revenue to California’s school districts. This report uses the PPIC School Finance Model to asses this revision. It finds that the proposed changes would lead to less funding for disadvantaged students and reduce the differences in funding gains among districts.

Conclusion

The revisions to the governor’s proposal have reduced differences among districts in how new revenue would be allocated. In the original proposal, high school districts received relatively smaller increases in revenue than other districts. The grade-level weights in the new proposal have lowered that difference. For a given level of student disadvantage, under the new proposal high school districts would receive similar revenue increases as other districts receive. The revised proposal also distributes additional revenue more evenly among districts of the same type. The original proposal channeled proportionally more revenue to districts with high percentages of disadvantaged students. This is still true with the revised proposal, but the differences are smaller among districts with different levels of student disadvantage.

May 30, 2012 :: There is the ongoing contentious debate brewing in education over linking teachers’ job security to their students’ academic performance. Many teachers complain that the emphasis

on measuring their performance based on student performance, as well as the general stress on test scores, creates a temptation to forego creative, challenging lesson plans and instead “teach to the test.”

Some are struggling against the trend, arguing that it can inflict long-term damage if students graduate without learning comprehensive reading and critical thinking skills.

During this special hour, we check in on a program called Humanitas at Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley that is employing an innovative approach to teaching -- one that seems to be successful, though not without its challenges.

As the Humanitas program tries to go beyond “teaching to the test,” its teachers confront a host of challenges: How do they reach kids who have made it to high school without ever reading a book and have limited study skills? How do they assign compelling and contemporary reading material when there aren’t enough textbooks and the school’s copy machines don’t work? How do they make kids feel valued when they don’t have enough desks or even janitors to sweep the floors? How do they get parents, many of whom are immigrants and either unfamiliar with the school system or too busy working long hours, to participate in their kids’ education? How do they get the resources and support they need to implement the program to its fullest potential?

Regardless of whether test scores go up and down or how "Secret Life of the American Teenager" portrays the school, the students at Grant High School are just teenagers. They have dreams. They have problems. They have secrets, and they shared some with us.

What was your high school secret? Tweet with #teensecrets, tag KPCC in your Facebook post, or share confidentially at scpr.org/network. Bonus points if you write it down and take a picture of it. Thank you!

Guests:

Brock Cohen, teacher, Humanitas program at Grant High School Deja Mitchell, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Kaleb Wilks, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Katie Cohen, teacher, Humanitas program at Grant High School Macie Mullens, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Michael Clark, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Rachel Watson, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Harjinder Singh, graduate of Grant High School and recipient of the Gates Millenium Scholarship Linda Ibach, principal, Grant High School Melissa Serrano, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Simone Linscomb, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Noreen Kragen,student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Edita Abelyan, student, Humanitas program at Grant High School Diane Bekian, Humanitas program at Grant High School Kristen Makaryan, Humanitas program at Grant High School

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 :: A new report on chronic absenteeism confirms its status as a major barrier to pupil success but says efforts to define the scope of the problem are hampered by a dearth of absenteeism data.

“The Importance of Being in School,” by researcher Dr. Robert Balfanz of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, found only a handful of states measure and report on chronic absenteeism, which the report defines as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a given year – California being among those who do not keep up with the reporting.

“Because it is not measured, chronic absenteeism is not acted upon,” Balfanz notes. “Like bacteria in a hospital, chronic absenteeism can wreak havoc long before it is discovered.”

The report estimates up to 15 percent of students nationwide are chronically absent, meaning as many as 7.5 million students miss enough school to be at severe risk of dropping out or failing to graduate from high school.

The report splits absenteeism into three broad categories:

• Students who cannot attend school due to illness, family responsibilities, housing instability, the need to work or involvement with the juvenile justice system.

• Students who will not attend school to avoid bullying, unsafe conditions, and harassment.

• Students who do not attend school because they, or their parents, do not see the value in being there, they have something else they would rather do, or nothing stops them skipping school.

The study differentiates chronic absenteeism from truancy or average daily attendance, the attendance rate schools use for state report cards and federal accountability.

At the school level, average daily attendance rates largely mask the problem. The report notes a school can have an average daily attendance rate of 90 percent and still have 40 percent of its students chronically absent, since different students comprise that 90 percent on different days.

The true magnitude of the problem likely is understated, Balfanz reported, as his research could find chronic absenteeism reports for only Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Another variable is the different ways in which states measure chronic absenteeism. There are differences in the number of days missed and whether transfer students are included in the counts.

The six states reported chronic absentee rates from 6 percent to 23 percent, with high poverty urban areas reporting up to one-third of chronically absent students. In poor rural areas, one in four students can miss at least a month’s worth of school.

Chronic absenteeism is most prevalent among low-income students, with gender and ethnic backgrounds apparently not a factor. The youngest and the oldest students tend to have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, with students attending most regularly in grades three through five. The absenteeism rates begin to rise in middle school and continue to climb through grade 12, with seniors often having the highest rate of all.

The negative impact on school success are also noted in the report, which found significant numbers of students in low-income neighborhoods miss staggering amounts of school, sometimes from six months to more than one year, over a five-year period .

Balfanz called out a number of big states, including California and New York, for not collecting individual attendance data and the need to calculate chronic absenteeism.

“Because we don’t measure or monitor the problem, we generally don’t act on it,” said Balfanz. “Left untreated, the problem will likely worsen achievement gaps between rich districts and poor districts and curtail the positive effects of promising current and future reforms.”

Balfanz calls the data reporting problem structural, running from the school to the state to the federal level. Schools know students are missing but don’t examine the data by student to determine individual absenteeism rates.

The impact of missed days is dramatic: chronically absent students are less likely to score well on achievement tests and less likely to graduate. Students who miss 10 percent of school days on average score in the 30th percentile on standardized reading and math tests, compared to those with zero absences, who score in the 50th percentile.

After evaluating data from multiple states and school districts, researchers concluded consistently high chronic absenteeism is the strongest predictor of dropping out of high school, stronger than course failures, suspensions or test scores. Data from Georgia showed a very strong relationship between attendance in grades eight, nine, and 10 and graduation, with as much as a 50 percentage-point difference in graduation rates for students who missed five or fewer days compared to those who missed 15 or more days.

The report’s other findings include:

• Students who are chronically absent in one year likely will be so in subsequent years and may miss more than a half-year of school over four or five years.

• Urban schools often have chronic absentee rates as high as one third of students, while poor rural areas are in the 25 percent range.

• While the problem affects youth from all backgrounds, children in poverty are more likely to be chronically absent. In Maryland, chronic absentee rates for poor students exceeded 30 percent, compared to less than 12 percent for students from more affluent families.

• Chronically absent students tended to be concentrated in a relatively small number of schools. In Florida, 52 percent of chronically absent students were in just 15 percent of schools.

• In some school districts, kindergarten absenteeism rates are nearly as high as those in high school.

• In a nationally representative data set, chronic absence in kindergarten was associated with lower academic performance in first grade. The impact is twice as great for students from low-income families.

Despite the connections between absenteeism and lack of success in school, the report does offer an encouraging note about attendance.

“Students need to attend school daily to succeed,” it says. “The good news of this report is that being in school leads to succeeding in school.”

To reduce chronic absenteeism, the report suggests instituting aggressive attendance campaigns, and having the federal government, state departments of education, and school districts regularly measure and report the rates of chronic absenteeism and regular attendance for every school.

It also says mayors and governors must play critical roles in leading inter-agency task forces that bring health, housing, justice, transportation, and education agencies together to coordinate efforts to help every student attend every day.

May 30, 2012 :: A settlement with the employee who made allegations of sexual harassment against former L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines threatened to unravel Tuesday over disputed terms of the agreement and its disclosure by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The allegations also have had fallout at the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, which sent a delegation Tuesday to meet with Board of Education President Monica Garcia over changing the downtown school's name.

The harassment allegations arose from an encounter between Graham and the former superintendent at Cortines' ranch in Kern County in July 2010. In a statement, Cortines last week described what happened as an episode of consensual, "adult behavior."

Scot Graham contended, through his attorneys, that Cortines had made inappropriate sexual advances.

The school system announced last week that the Board of Education had approved paying $200,000 and providing lifetime benefits to Graham, a senior manager for 12 years in the facilities division. In exchange, Graham agreed to resign as of May 31, the district said at a media briefing.

Officials also acknowledged they could not confirm that the agreement had been signed, but they said they anticipated no hold-ups.

That optimism was premature, in part because of the district's announcement, which was managed by the public relations firm Cerrell & Associates.

"The press briefing occurred without Mr. Graham's consent to be publicly identified, and before an agreement was signed," according to a statement from Graham's attorneys. "No final agreement has been reached."

Graham's attorneys also have disputed a timeline of events, supplied by the district, suggesting that officials handled the matter sensitively from the start. In addition, they said Graham understood the value of the lifetime health benefits to be $300,000, whereas the district told reporters the value was $250,000. That discrepancy has given them pause, they said, as well as additional reason to question the school system's good faith.

The school system said it is sticking to the settlement agreed upon by both sides.

"The district relied on Mr. Graham's acceptance and stands by the terms reached," said Linda Savitt, an outside attorney representing the school system.

State law would prevent the district from firing Graham, who was earning $150,000 a year, for bringing a sexual-harassment allegation.

The harassment allegations revived a sore spot in how the arts high school was named. Garcia and her colleagues had overriden pledges to give students, parents and teachers a key role in choosing a name for the campus when the board decided to name it for Cortines.

A group of school leaders met with Garcia for 90 minutes Tuesday, raising that issue. In a letter, they stated concern about "how the name of our school will be associated with improper actions by a former superintendent."

Monday, May 28, 2012

[We] used to have lively debates about standards, curriculum, pedagogy, and a lot of other matters where we disagreed. Now those debates seem antique compared with the current uncertainty about the future of public education.

The question today is whether a democratic society needs public schools subject to democratic governance. Why not turn public dollars over to private corporations to run schools as they see fit? Isn't the private sector better and smarter than the public sector?

The rise of charter schools has been nothing short of meteoric. They were first proposed in 1988 by Raymond Budde, a Massachusetts education professor, and Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Budde dreamed of chartering programs or teams of teachers, not schools. Shanker thought of charters as small schools, staffed by union teachers, created to recruit the toughest-to-educate students and to develop fresh ideas to help their colleagues in the public schools. Their originators saw charters as collaborators, not competitors, with the public schools.

Now the charter industry has become a means of privatizing public education. They tout the virtues of competition, not collaboration. The sector has many for-profit corporations, eagerly trolling for new business opportunities and larger enrollments. Some charters skim the top students in the poorest neighborhoods; some accept very small proportions of students who have disabilities or don't speak English; some quietly push out those with low scores or behavior problems (the Indianapolis public schools recently complained about this practice by local charters).

Contrary to the vision of the founders, the charter sector is overwhelmingly non-union. It has come to depend on young college graduates, who start at the bottom of the salary scale and leave within a few years. This keeps costs low and enables the charters to pay their executives handsomely and to create rewards for the for-profit industry. Charters are known for high turnover of both teachers and principals.

The results are in: Some charters get high test scores, some get low scores, most are no different in test scores from public schools. The wonder is that there are so many low-performing and mediocre charters when they have everything the reform movement demands: no unions, no tenure, no seniority, performance pay, and plenty of uncertified or alternatively certified teachers.

The hedge-fund managers love to get public funding to manage schools that enroll minority children; this not only reduces the cost to them of running a charter school, but it enables them to fantasize that they are part of the civil rights movement of our day. Frankly, it is hard to imagine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. linking arms with Wall Street hedge-fund managers in a crusade to eliminate unions and to promote privately controlled alternatives to the public schools where the great majority of children are enrolled. Some of us remember that Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting the right of the city's sanitation workers to join a union.

I didn't understand just how devoted the hedge-fund managers are to charter schools until someone sent me this article from a business magazine: "Joining the school yard battle." It lists the many hedge-fund managers who are on the board of charter schools in New York City. There are also hedge-fund managers in other states (like David Tepper in New Jersey) who use their vast resources to promote charter schools and to attack teachers' hard-earned job protections.

The power of Wall Street is obvious. Political candidates must swear fealty to charter schools if they want to raise campaign contributions from hedge-funders. Perhaps that explains the enthusiasm for charter schools by the Obama administration, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Connecticut Gov. Dannell Malloy. There is no need to explain Republican enthusiasm for charter schools, because Republicans have been promoting school choice for the past 40 years. The only thing new is that the Wall Street guys have adopted the Republican agenda and rebranded it.

Wall Street understands success and failure. When companies fail, investors bail out. As studies continue to show that charters on average don't get better test scores than public schools, will Wall Street continue to be bullish about charters? Will they support only the ones that skim and exclude? When will they cut their losses?

That day will come, as the results continue to show that charters are no silver bullet, and that they succeed mainly by adding extra resources and picking their students carefully.

What will happen to American public education after Wall Street loses interest in charters and discovers other fun causes?

27 May 2012 :: California’s former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has been traveling the state to brief school districts on the governor’s proposed budget and its potential effects on education. He now works for the educational consulting firm School Innovations & Advocacy.

Here's an excerpt of a brief Q & A with him:

Q: Whats the good and the bad of this budget?

A: The good news for this is we know the budget’s going to pass on time, we know it’s going to be signed, we certainly believe. And I think that might remove some uncertainty. But that uncertainty is going to continue, it’s going to because of the triggeres, the potential reductions, based upon the November election.

Q: What does this budget look like compared to others you've seen?

A: This budget contains more major policy initiatives in it than any that I’ve ever seen and I’ve been working on state budgets since 1982. This is a budget that toally rewirtes education school finance so that we don’t have money going out the door based upon money for kids in schools at school districts based upon some historical and traditional criteria. It really changes the distribution formula significantly. It proposed to o eliminate most of our categorical programs. It proposes to change our mandate program, so it really lets the state off the hook for those school districts that are going to seek reimbursement for maximum remuneration of services that they’re going to deliver.

It's a budget that through the budget process tries to eliminate transitional kindergarten, a program that the Legislature passed about two years ago that was going to have two years to ramp up, and now the govenror’s going to try to eliminate that. It’s a budget that really does attempt to significantly change policy. Not just fiscal policy, but real public policy.

Q: Is that in a good way?

A: I would certainly argue that the policy committees in the Legislature should be part of this discussion and part of this debate. For example if you’re going to try to elimnate the mandate on background checks that’s a public safety issue and we ought to make sure that’s heard by the public safety committee. If you’re going to attempt to eliminate funding through the mandate process for the actual cost of truants that too affects the school community, that affects the law enforcmenet community, and so that too ought to be discussed in the policy committee.

...

So many of these initiatives and bills have been passed and initiated to solve a problem, to address an issue, and to simply, through the budget process, try to eliminate funding for these programs, I don’t think is good sound public policy. We should really have the policy committees be able to render their opinion, their judgment, with maximum public participation. I think that helps minimize unintended consequences.

Q: What are people seeing today compared to what they saw in January?

A: The state budget deficit has grown significantly, from about $9 billion in January to about $16 billion. So the scope of the problem has increased nearly two-fold. That means they're more at risk for potential triggers. That means it’s more important the the governor's intiative pass. Otherwise, deficits are going to continue to grow."

Q: Why do all these major cuts seem to be to education?

A: The politics of this initiative, in my opinion, are public education, people don’t want to make any more cuts. People see the cuts have been real, seen, experienced, and felt, and to the detriment of our public school system. And so, if the governor can portray this initiative — that if my initiative fails then you’re going to see a disproportionate reduction in education funding — in the final analysis that might be the case...But I’m hopeful that, number one, the initiative passes, I’m supporting it and hope that it passes, I’ll be voting for it. Number two, I think even if it weren’t going to be successful I think we would have to revisit the notion that 99% of the cuts would come from education."

Q: So education won’t necessarily be cut so severely?

A: I think there's no question about it, that if the governor's initiative does not pass there will be severe reductions to public education. Will it be as severe as some people have talked about? Will there be potentially three weeks less school? I don’t think so. But would there be less school? I do think so. Will it be three weeks? Probably not that much.

Deborah Meier and Nancy Carlsson-Paige will discuss the myriad ways that young children learn through play and active experiences. They will contrast this meaningful and engaged learning with the more superficial, mechanical learning that is promoted when standards and tests dominate the early childhood curriculum, and discuss the implications of education reform policies for children and society.

Sunday, May 27, 2012 – LEWISTON :: Nearly 500 eager graduates gathered at Bates College on Sunday morning under beautiful blue skies to be sent off into the future by an eclectic and entertaining trio of speakers at the private liberal arts college's 146th commencement.

Thousands of family, friends and loved ones lined the school's historic quad and cheered as the Class of 2012, representing 33 states and 31 countries, made its way down the center aisle.

Featured speakers included leading molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler, actor Robert De Niro and PBS "NewsHour" senior correspondent Gwen Ifill. The three also received honorary doctorates from the college.

But it was the Oscar-winning De Niro who stole the spotlight, joking with graduates one minute, poking fun at himself and Bates at other times and ultimately settling into the serious demeanor he's best known for as an actor.

"If you're an actor, always be true to your character," a serious De Niro instructed the graduates. "If you're not an actor, then have character and always be true to yourself."

The 68-year-old De Niro dropped out of high school at age 16 to pursue an acting career. He told students his late mother would be proud of her son, who never graduated from high school or attended college, receiving an honorary doctorate. He also joked with the crowd about how his decision to drop out of school and not attend college saved about $6,000 back in the 1960s.

He joked with the crowd about how his decision today would have saved him roughly $250,000 for an education from Bates, and he got the degree anyway.

Mixed with the laughs about Bates' price tag, the students' wishing Will Ferrell was speaking instead of him, and telling students to be movie stars or "stay in school" because "the world is a scary place," De Niro offered students the same fatherly advice he said he bestowed on his own children.

"You came here, most of you, because of your values. This isn't a day for advice, it's a day for pats on the back," De Niro said. "Keep an open mind. Welcome new experiences. And don't be afraid to fail. If you don't go, you'll never know."

Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Thousands of people attended the 2012 Bates College commencement. Featured speakers included Robert De Niro, Bonnie Bassler and Gwen Ifill.

Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Robert De Niro was not the only famous person to attend the Bates College commencement. Sigourney Weaver came to watch her daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth Simpson, receive her diploma.

De Niro's message was similar to those of fellow commencement speakers Bassler and Ifill.

"When I was sitting where you're sitting, I'd been living for 22 years with a very strong internal critic," Bassler said, reminiscing about her days as a painfully shy University of California at Davis student. "I never imagined I would be this happy. I get to live a life of curiosity."

And getting there, the Princeton University professor pointedly told the crowd, came not from her degrees in biochemistry or national and international accolades for her scientific discoveries in how bacteria communicate.

It came simply from learning to say "yes" to all the challenges life presented her. Even today, as a nationally recognized scholar, she confessed to students of how she overcome her own fears about sharing Sunday's stage with the likes of De Niro and Ifill. Only by saying "yes" did she pave the way and find the courage to one day stand before future college commencement crowds by gaining the experience before the Bates Class of 2012.

"You do it by finding — or better yet — by making your own adventure. You do it by not saying 'no' because you're a afraid. There's a big difference between not doing something and not wanting to do something," Bassler said. "If I had one do-over in life, I would have learned to say 'yes' much sooner."

Bassler's rousing speech was met by a standing ovation from many in the crowd. Even Ifill, who spoke last, joked about expecting to be overshadowed by De Niro, but not a molecular biologist.

Ifill also urged students to open their minds to the world around them.

"My advice to you: look up," Ifill said. "It's so much simpler to look down. Our feet are down there. Our screens are down there. But our fears are down there, too."

The award-winning PBS journalist and author urged the graduates to take their eyes off their smartphones and computers long enough to recognize their futures and realize there is an entire world out there. A world, she added, that won't improve without them and other young people.

"If you look up, you see you have a responsibility to build a set of steps for all those behind you to catch up," Ifill said.

Sunday, May 27, 2:29 PM LEWISTON, Maine (AP) | As he received an honorary doctorate Sunday, Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro told Bates College graduates that despite his own lack of formal education, he made out OK.

During a 15-minute address that was by turns sincere and irreverent, De Niro drew a steady stream of laughter from the 463 graduating seniors and more than 5,000 onlookers at the private, liberal arts college’s campus.

De Niro, who quit high school to pursue an acting career, was one of three high-profile guests who received honorary degrees at the Bates commencement. PBS “Newshour” senior correspondent Gwen Ifill and Princeton University molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler also were honored.

But it was De Niro who stole the show.

“In many ways, leaving school when I did it was an advantage. I saved nearly $6,000 by not having to pay tuition and expenses for four years of education,” he said. “I feel a little foolish, because if I had waited until now not to go to college, I could have saved around a quarter of a million.”

Looking back, he said, “it worked out just fine. I saved the money, and I got the degree.”

The honorary doctorate of fine arts was conferred by Nancy Cable, interim president at Bates. Trustee Michael Chu, De Niro’s friend, presented the degree.

De Niro also offered the graduates some serious advice.

“If you’re an actor, always be true to your character,” he said. “If you’re not an actor, have character and always be true to yourself.”

De Niro won a best actor Academy Award for “Raging Bull” and best supporting actor Oscar for “The Godfather, Part II.” He earned four more Oscar nominations.

smf: I don’t know which Bates graduation the AP reporter went to, but De Niro’s opening message was “Stay in School”.Especially if you can’t be a movie star! And I realize that everyone is a film critic – and Dr. DeNiro was by turns funny, sincere and irreverent – but it was molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler who stole the show! See for yourself.

08:00 AM ET, 05/24/2012 :: Anybody who thinks President Obama’s education policies have been unfriendly to public education should pay close attention to Mitt Romney’s newly announced school reform vision. Because what you don’t like about Obama’s, you may like even less about Romney’s.

“A Chance For Every Child” is the name of the education program that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate spelled out in a speech and then a white paper released on Wednesday.

<< (LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS)

Romney is advancing a pro-choice, pro-voucher, pro-states-rights education program that seems certain to hasten the privatization of the public education system.

In a Romney-run education world, the parents of poor and special education students would choose a school — public or private, based on standardized test scores and other data — and then a specific amount of public money would follow the child to the school.

It’s a voucher system that would, among other things, require families of the neediest children to constantly shop around for schools in an unstable market and would likely exacerbate the very thing — a chronic achievement gap — all of this is supposedly intended to fix. Obama opposes vouchers.

Romney’s education vision is based on an ideology that demonizes unions and views the market as the driver of education reform. His program is not based on quality research or best practices; indeed, it doesn't mention the one reform that has been shown over years to be effective, early childhood education.

It also inores the role that outside-school factors play in how well a student does in the classroom. School reformers and politicians can talk all they want about how a great teacher can overcome the effects of living in poverty and turmoil, but, systemically, they can’t. A hungry or tired or sick student just won’t do as well as one who isn’t. You only have to look at the most successful schools — traditional public and public charter and private — to know this to be true.

Even though Romney has in the past praised the president’s education policies — they both, for example, support the expansion of charter schools — his white paper sharply criticizes Obama and works hard to draw distinctions between them.

One area where they depart company is the role of the federal government in education.

Obama’s Education Department has been powerful in shaping how states reform their schools by dangling billions of federal dollars — with major conditions attached. The problem has been those conditions, not the notion that the federal government has some role to play in public education.

Romney’s view is that the federal government should have pretty much no control over local education. He would eliminate the accountability system in the unpopular No Child Left Behind Act, which would mean that states would no longer have to meet federal requirements for improving schools. States would again be left alone to run their own systems, a situation that led that famous liberal, George W. Bush, to insist on federal mandates in the first place a decade ago.

Under Romney’s plan, standardized tests would remain central to school and teacher “accountability” (even though these tests weren’t designed for high-stakes purposes). It is fitting that the forward to the white paper was written by Jeb Bush, who, when governor of Florida from 1999-2007, created the test-based accountability system that has served as a model for other states (even though it has had so many problems that one major newspaper in the state recently declared it a failure).

Romney opposes what he calls “unnecessary” teacher certification requirements, leaving the teaching door open to anybody who, for example, thinks they can teach math because they got good grades in the subject.

He attacks the federal “highly qualified teacher” requirement as well-intentioned but says it serves only to “prevent talented individuals” from becoming teachers. This suggests that nobody on Romney’s team knows — or wants to acknowledge — that Congress has already undercut the requirement to allow anybody in a teacher training program to be considered highly qualified.

Romney’s white paper repeatedly assails teachers unions while ignoring some key realities. He accuses Obama of being beholden to the unions. The unions would probably find that amusing; they only reluctantly came to work with the administration on some key reform initiatives.

The National Education Association, the largest union in the country, has endorsed Obama, but that’s hardly because it is in love with his education policies. The NEA president, Dennis Van Roekel, has said that the union supports Obama because of his belief in public education and other shared values, and that any Republican presidential candidate would be “very much anti-collective bargaining and anti-public education.”

The whole “blame the union” strategy has a central internal inconsistency: the problems in public education are the same in states with and without unions. The teachers unions may not have bathed themselves in glory and may have dragged their feet about reforming teacher evaluation, but it hardly seems fair to pin the “crisis in education” on them.

There is no question that the public education system as the country has known it for decades has faced strong challenges, and has failed too many of the children in it. But rather than finding ways to strengthen it, the Bush and Obama administrations have made things more difficult for children and teachers — all in the name of accountability and higher standards. And if Romney gets a chance to run education policy according to his new plan, expect things to get worse.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

05-25-2012 :: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has begun to lay out his education vision. On Tuesday, Romney announced the names of his education policy advisors, whom Diane Ravitch and others see as "a re-run of the George W. Bush administration" (Diane Ravitch blog, Education Week). A day later Romney paid homage to those predecessors by outlining some favorite Republican ideas from a decade ago.

In a speech to the Latino Coalition's Annual Economic Summit, Romney voiced anger over the state of U.S. public schools—doing so with tones of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism": “...Millions of kids are getting a third-world education," he said, "and, America's minority children suffer the most. This is the civil-rights issue of our era" (full speech text).

The solution, Romney said, would lie in many of the same reforms that have been touted during the last two administrations. A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education, highlights greater accountability (albeit from states, not the federal government), school report cards, and linking pay to teacher effectiveness. However, Romney’s provisions and rhetoric are more strident than past or current administrations. According to aWashington Post blog, "Romney’s education vision is based on an ideology that demonizes unions and views the market as the driver of education reform. His program is not based on quality research or best practices."

Most significant was Romney’s promise to use vouchers to expand school choice in an "unprecedented way" (Education Week, NPR, Los Angeles Times). Romney's vouchers would let parents use Title I and special-education funds to send their students to charters or private schools or access online learning programs.

Some critics have been quick to point out that adding burdens to already cash-strapped districts will not allow them to meet the needs of their neediest students. Others have called it a political ploy for low-income, minority voters. Still other critics point to the logistics of giving parents “choices” when none exist: neither the private sector nor publically funded charters have shown the capacity and/or interest to absorb large numbers of students who have special needs or whose families are very poor.

A 2011 report by the Center on Education Policy reviewed a decade's worth of research on vouchers and found no clear positive impact on student achievement, despite the fact that much of this research has been conducted by research organizations with ties to the voucher movement (Education Research Report). Little can be found in the last 12 years of “marketplace” reform that should give reformers confidence that vouchers can benefit education quality, equality, or the social good (Education Week).

Posted by Michael Dunn, Modern School | http://bit.ly/K189iT

1. Demand low taxes to increase personal income while decimating school budgets, thus making public education look like a disaster in need of corporate management

2. Claim your private enterprise will solve these problems and should be funded with public tax dollars (e.g., charter schools, Common Core Standards, laptops for every child, new textbooks or ebooks, tutoring services, etc.)

3. Insist that teachers’ unions are the main impediment to reform and lobby to have them weakened, eviscerated or outright banned

There is no question that record low tax rates combined with revenue losses due to the housing market collapse have contributed to LAUSD’s budget woes, which in turn have led district officials to attempt all sort of ludicrous shenanigans, like asking teachers to take 20 furlough days (and consequently asking students to give up 20 days of instructional time). The latest absurdity is Sup. Deasy’s plan to plug the nearly $400 million dyke with a measly $25 million federal Race to the Top (RttT) grant (see the Los Angeles Times).

For the first time, RttT grants will be offered to individual school districts, and not just states, willing to sell their souls for chump change. Aside from the fact that the grant would only cover 6% of the current budget hole, the one-time grant would expire at the end of the school year, leaving the district with the same problem the following year unless it can increase its revenue stream or find longer-term and bigger cuts.

There are those who would argue that $25 million is better than nothing and in these dark times one must take what one can get. However, one must consider what must be sacrificed in order to get this “free” money before one can call it a good deal.

One of the biggest sticking points is that the state or local districts would need to get union support before moving ahead, since RttT requires the use of student test score data in teacher evaluations, something that cannot occur without changes to teachers’ contracts. Some NEA and AFT locals around the nation have rolled over and accepted this, despite the fact that the data is inconsistent and often inaccurate even when used properly and, in many cases, it is not even used properly (seehere, here and here). Consequently, many good teachers could be mischaracterized as ineffective and possibly fired as a result, thus depriving students of good teachers. Worse, it could drive many good teachers away from challenging lower income schools, or from the profession entirely, thus worsening the problem evaluation reform purports to fix.

Updated*: 05/25/2012 03:34:12 PM PDT :: Birmingham High officials have promised to rework admissions and disciplinary policies, enhance training and improve communication with LAUSD in an effort to prevent a revocation of the school's charter.

The proposed reforms are detailed in a 215-page action plan filed Wednesday, the deadline for Birmingham to respond to a notice of charter violations issued May 1 by the Los Angeles Unified board.

While campus officials maintain that some of the violations result from misunderstandings with the district, "as a large and relatively new charter school, we acknowledge that we have made some mistakes and have not done the best job of communicating with the district," their response says.

Larry Schapiro, who chairs Birmingham's governing board, said Thursday the school is prepared to do whatever it takes to retain its charter. School officials worked closely with LAUSD board member Tamar Galatzan and with district staff members in crafting the response.

"We asked for honest and tough suggestions about where we went wrong, where we didn't do as good a job as we should have," Schapiro said.

Galatzan said she raised a number of issues with charter officials, including the high number of student expulsions, admissions irregularities and the lack of communication between Birmingham and the district.

"I was also concerned that, for whatever reason, their governing board claimed not to have known about the problems," said Galatzan, who graduated from Birmingham. "If a board is running the school, I hold them responsible for not knowing what's going on."

Schapiro has repeatedly said that Birmingham officials were stunned to receive a letter last month from Superintendent John Deasy, advising that the school's charter was in jeopardy.

That letter outlined complaints from parents who said the school had illegally denied admission to special-education children and other youths from outside the neighborhood.

There were also concerns about an inordinate number of expulsions and allegations that the school's basketball coach had discriminated against African-American players on the team. In its response, Birmingham officials denied that special-needs students had been denied admission because of their status. However, staffers were unaware that a charter must accept any student in the district and instead had been using the school's former attendance boundaries to determine enrollment.

The school has already begun training sessions to avoid a recurrence of the problem, Schapiro said.

The school has also overhauled its suspension and expulsion policy to bring it into alignment with LAUSD. The previous policy included a longer list of offenses that resulted in students being expelled.

However, Birmingham rebutted the district's criticism over its handling of a racial bias complaint filed by a parent. Officials detailed their own investigation of the complaint, which is now the subject of a probe by the federal Office of Civil Rights. They argued that an allegation of discrimination by itself is not enough to conclude there is indeed discrimination, as a basis for revoking the charter.

To help make improvements, the school has hired Doris Lasiter - who was principal before Birmingham went charter - as its interim executive director. It also plans to add four people with charter or other educational experience to its 11-member governing board.

The action plan will now be reviewed by Deasy and the district's Charter Division, which may recommend additional changes before taking it to the school board.

* An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that allegations of racial discrimination had been filed against the Birmingham athletic director. The story has been corrected to reflect that the allegations were made against the basketball coach.

Friday, May 25, 2012

May 25 5PM :: Unit E (Skilled Trades Employees) agreed to the unpaid furlough days providing more than $2.6 million dollars to help save jobs.

“Again, our valued employees are willing to share the sacrifices necessary to save jobs and services,” said Superintendent John Deasy.

Ron Miller, Unit E Business Representative, said, “The Building Trades and its affiliates continue to work with the District to develop innovative opportunities to bring savings to the District, maintain and upgrade infrastructure and keep our members on the job.”

SEIU (Service Employees International Union) agreed to the unpaid furlough days preserving thousands of union jobs and full-year assignments totaling more than $40 million!

“With this agreement the District recognizes the valuable role played by the SEIU membership in helping students learn,” said Dr. Deasy.

Bill A Lloyd, the unions executive director, said, “As parents of children at LAUSD we understand this sacrifice is necessary in order to save good jobs and the services our children need to learn.”

To take effect, the tentative agreements must be ratified by the union membership and approved by the LA Board of Education.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP - California State University Chancellor, Charles Reed, right, discusses the effects of past budget cuts. Reed announced Thursday that he’s retiring after 14 years in the university system.

24 May :: California State University Chancellor Charles Reed announced Thursday that he’s retiring after 14 years in the university system.

In a statement, Reed said he’s proud to have overseen the largest public university in the nation as it grew by 100,000 students and issued a million diplomas. He’s also proud of Cal State’s programs to recruit and retain more black, Latino, Native American and military veteran students.

The heads of the University of California and the California Community Colleges, along with Assembly Speaker John Perez, praised Reed’s performance on the job.

3/25 - 3:21pm - Only one of three bills recently introduced in the state Legislature that aim to make it easier to dismiss teachers is alive today, and may continue on to change state law.

AB2028, sponsored by Republican state Assemblymen Cameron Smyth of Santa Clarita and Steve Knight of the Antelope Valley, died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee today — the end of the fiscal deadline.

The bill, which was significantly amended last month, would eliminate the four-year limitation on introducing evidence to be used in proceedings and allow the dismissal process to begin during the summer.

AB2028 passed out of committee in its amended form last month, but was put "on suspense" in the Appropriations Committee because it cost more than $150,000; a hearing was held today to take bills off suspense, but AB2028 died without a vote, said Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the Office of Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway.

It would have cost the state $175,000 because of the expenses associated with mandating schools keep records for longer than four years, Lockhart said.

The California State Assembly Republican Caucus has pushed the bill, which in its initial form mirrored the L.A. Unified school board resolutions adopted on the dismissal issue after a recent spate of teacher arrests for lewd conduct with children. The California Teachers Assn. has vocally opposed the dismissal bills introduced at the Legislature and called them a retraction of due process protections for teachers.

"The committee approved hundreds of bills today, and I'm sure many of them cost more than $175,000," Lockhart said.

Lockhart said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's staff testified in support of AB2028 in April and told legislators that it costs $300,000 to dismiss one teacher.

Another bill, SB1059, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, never passed out of commitee in April.

Of the three bills, only SB1530 remains alive. It passed out of the state Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. It will go to the state Senate next week for a vote. Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla of Pacoima worked with the CTA and committee members to amend the bill and narrow its scope.